


This Is How They Win

by janonny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Bittersweet Ending, Get Together, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 04:23:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janonny/pseuds/janonny
Summary: In the aftermath of Thanos’ actions, Tony is convinced that this isn’t the end of the fight. Not yet. Doctor Strange had told him the only way to win the war, and Tony is going to follow through. No matter what.





	This Is How They Win

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [他们如何赢得无限战争|This Is How They Win](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15573660) by [aaamoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaamoon/pseuds/aaamoon), [janonny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janonny/pseuds/janonny)



> Canon divergence where Tony is not back together with Pepper again. But they are still good friends. 
> 
> Thank you a million times over to [franzwantscoffee](http://franzwantscoffee.tumblr.com) for the thorough beta-reading! I was pretty nervous with this one, since I wrote it quickly and then spent days tweaking it, but your beta-reading gave me the confidence to finally post it.
> 
> Edit to add: Here's a non-AO3 link to [the Chinese translation of my fic](http://aaamoon.lofter.com/post/1eb5d730_12d3870c). Thank you, aaamoon! <3

Tony staggered off the ship, bruised and a little sick from the rough landing. They were in a cornfield, green stalks stretching for miles on end. There was a house not too far away, but still a trek for someone with a wound in his side.

Nebula’s ship had been badly damaged from the fight with Thanos, which made for some hair-raising moments when they entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Tony had tried to get Nebula to aim for America, not knowing where else to go, but he had no idea where they actually landed.

“Let’s go,” he said to her, dragging his feet in the direction of the house.

She hefted his arm easily over her shoulder, taking most of his weight and hauling him along.

Tony was barely shuffling his feet by the time they got to the farmhouse, where a kid — he looked about twelve — was watching them warily from the open door.

“Hey,” Tony said. “I’m Tony Stark. Could you get your parents?”

The kid’s eyes were large and red-rimmed. And even before he answered, Tony knew what he would say.

“They’re gone. They disappeared,” the kid said, voice breaking.

For a second, his head was filled with echoes of another young voice, breaking, as he begged not to go. 

Tony gritted his teeth, pushing away from Nebula and stumbling to the door. He gripped the kid’s shoulder and looked into his wet eyes.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tony said in a steady, strong voice. “I’m going to bring them back.”

# # # # # #

Even with Stark Industries’ resources, it took a day for Tony to be flown to a hospital, where he was immediately rushed into surgery. The kid was brought along, Tony making sure that arrangements were made for his care.

By the time Tony got out of surgery, the rest of the Avengers were there, having flown in on Wakandan planes.

Consciousness returned slowly, horrible reality seeping in. He opened his eyes from quiet nothingness to a waking nightmare. How he wished he could just go back to sleep, to close his eyes and not face reality.

But he was Iron Man.

And his work wasn’t over.

He grew aware of someone’s hand in his.

“Hey, Tones, you’re back with us?” That was Rhodey’s voice.

“Yeah,” Tony rasped out, blinking slowly and fixing his gaze on Rhodey.

Rhodey’s eyes were wide, wet at the edges. He gave Tony a trembling smile. “I thought you were gone. Didn’t know if we were ever going to see you again.”

“Same here. The whole trip back, I didn’t know who made it,” Tony said, squeezing Rhodey’s hand, feeling his eyes well up as he braced for what he knew would come. The odds were against them. Fifty-fifty. “I still don’t.”

He watched as Rhodey’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry, Tones. Pepper and Happy… they’re gone.”

Tony’s grip was tight; he couldn’t loosen it, feeling his body and muscles tense excruciatingly as anguish enveloped him.

No bodies to bury. Nothing to mourn over.

“Who else?” Tony needed to know.

Rhodey knew him well enough not to delay it. “My sisters are fine. My parents… They didn’t make it.”

Mama Rhodes, the protective, good humored woman who had sheltered Tony so often.

“I’m so sorry, Rhodey,” Tony whispered through numb lips, it was hard to believe he could still speak through the endless pain.

Rhodey only nodded and kept going through his tears. “We lost Vision, Wanda, Sam. And T’Challa and Bucky too. Thor turned up with some back-up, but we lost one of them too…”

Tony drew in a sharp breath at the litany of names. And across the world, countless more were lost.

No, not countless.

Half the population. 3.5 billion people.

Thanos was insane. How could the world recover from this? Everything would fall apart. Everything was already falling apart.

“Bruce said there was a sorcerer and that Peter kid on the spaceship with you. Did no one else…” Rhodey trailed off as he caught sight of Tony’s face. Tony had no idea what expression he was making, but it was enough for Rhodey to grip his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Tony.”

“I need… I need to rest,” Tony said, feeling bone-weary. “And then I need to talk to Steve.”

# # # # # #

They sat in silence, at first, taking each other in.

Tony was sitting up in bed, Steve in the visitor’s chair. He looked like he had aged a decade. Permanent frown lines were etched into his face, turning it into a constant, aching grimace.

Something about it struck Tony as wrong. Steve, with his superserum that should have kept him youthful for a good long while.

Steve looked exhausted. Despairing.

“We lost,” Steve finally said. He ran a large hand over his face. “You were right. And we weren’t prepared. We lost.”

Steve bent over in his chair, propping his elbows on his knees. He leaned the lower half of his face against his intertwined fingers, but Tony could still see his eyes. They looked dull. And empty.

Tony expected to feel vindicated. He expected to immediately come up with a snappy comment about how he had told them all, had foreseen this coming. He expected to feel some anger, some fury remaining against Steve who had hurt him on such a personal level.

But looking at this broken shell of a man, Tony couldn’t summon up any of the old anger. Tony knew he could be petty. He remembered holding the phone in his hand, still hesitating to make the call. But it was a distant memory now. The Before and After neatly divided in front of him like two different worlds.

Steve was just a man, a flawed man with ideals and beliefs, who made mistakes. Just like Tony. Tony who had different ideals and beliefs. Tony had made mistakes too.

And now, they had both lost. Too much.

How could Tony hold on to that anger, considering the weight of what just happened to them? To the _whole world_?

They were all equalized by their losses, they were all brought to their knees now.

“You were right too. And I prepared. But I lost anyway,” Tony said, softly. Steve looked up from where he had remained bent over in his chair, pain written in every line of his body. Tony reached out, and touched Steve’s left hand, giving comfort. “But we’re going to win this time.”

Steve stared at him, blue eyes dark with hopelessness, searching Tony’s own gaze. Something in Tony’s face, something in his steadfast conviction, his unwavering voice, seemed to wake up a kernel of light in Steve. In this despairing loss, Tony was giving him hope.

They might have been brought to their knees, but it was time to get up again.

“How?” Steve asked, almost not daring to believe.

“Together,” said Tony, “We have to do this together.”

# # # # # #

Tony outlined his plan to Steve first.

“Thanos did it with all the stones and the gauntlet. Which means if we can get that gauntlet, we can still undo this,” Tony explained.

“But we don’t know where to find him,” Steve pointed out, still cautious, still hesitant to hope. “And we couldn’t defeat him when he didn’t have all the stones, what makes this different? Thor said the gauntlet looked like it was badly damaged or even destroyed after Thanos used it.”

“Probably too much of a power surge,” Tony said. “It’s a good thing. It means Thanos can’t channel the power of the stones again without the gauntlet. We need to make our own gauntlet, a new one. And we need to stop Thanos from making another one.”

Life seemed to seep back into Steve’s face, mouth relaxing from their rigid lines. “Thor knows where the first one was made. He can go back there. He has an axe, it works like the bifrost.”

“Of course it does,” Tony said absently.

It was all coming together, just as Strange said it would. Tony’s mind spun the wheel of possibilities, coming up with ideas, slotting options into place.

If he messed up, if they did something wrong…

He remembered the feeling of Peter’s body, crumbling to dust in his hold, the sound of his voice, filled with fear as he ceased to exist.

No. Failure was not an option this time. They had to get it right.

“Tony?” Steve said, in a tone that meant he had been repeating it for awhile.

Tony reached out and grabbed Steve’s hand this time, holding on tight. Steve startled at the sudden contact but allowed it.

“We have to do this together. We can’t make the same mistake again,” Tony said, like it was a mantra.

Steve nodded, but looked a little worried.

Tony met his gaze and tried to convey the importance of this. “You don’t know him, but there was a wizard. Alright, he called himself the master of the mystic arts. He was Doctor Stephen Strange. He traded my life for the Time Stone.”

Steve’s eyes widened and his hand tightened on Tony’s hold. “After you got injured?”

“Yeah. Thanos stabbed me, he was going to kill me but Strange gave up the Time Stone for my life. I know Strange didn’t do it because he really liked me,” Tony said. “Before Thanos arrived, Strange had used the Time Stone to look at all our futures. He saw over 14 _million_ possible futures. There was only one where we won.”

“But we lost,” Steve said, voice hoarse.

Tony gripped his hand harder, trying to make him _see_. “We lost the battle, but not the war. Strange is playing a long game.”

“Strange is gone as well,” Steve pointed out. “You didn’t come back with him.”

“Yeah, and he knew it was coming. He didn’t give up the Time Stone and let himself get turned into a pile of dust for nothing. You need to _listen_ ,” Tony explained. “Before Thanos arrived, Strange said he saw that there was _one_ way we won. This is Strange’s end game. He didn’t tell anyone else on Titan, but he took me aside and told me. Everything he did from that point on was for the end game. We haven’t lost _yet_. There’s still a chance.”

“God, I hope that’s true, Tony. I really hope that’s true,” Steve said, a fervent light in his eyes.

Tony nodded. “It is. It’s written into our future. And… another thing Strange told me.”

He hesitated, unsure what to say, unsure if this would go down well.

Steve prompted, “What else did he say?”

“He said, we need to do this together.”

“You already said that,” Steve said, although there was a slight smile to his lips, exasperated fondness. Tony didn’t realize how much he’d missed that look from Steve.

“I know that. I meant… not just as a whole team, although teamwork is crucial as well. We can’t work apart again. But also, you and I. The both of us, specifically. He said… he said we had to work _together_ ,” Tony said, a little agitated, a little embarrassed.

But for all of Tony’s concerns, Steve took that better than everything else that Tony had said. Steve turned Tony’s hand over and squeezed it encouragingly.

“Alright, Tony. Sounds like a good plan,” Steve said, solemn but smiling at the same time.

That was a good reaction. Tony felt a wash of relief come over him, had no idea how tightly wound up he was until Steve looked at him like that, and said those words. Tony couldn’t do this alone, he couldn’t. But with Steve there…

Everything would be alright.

He couldn’t tell Steve everything that Strange said, because Tony didn’t know how to explain it himself. Didn’t think it was the right moment for some of the weird, cryptic stuff Strange had told him. But that didn’t matter. Those were just details. They had work to do.

# # # # # #

They worked by each other’s side every day. Every waking moment was devoted to making another gauntlet, finding Thanos, defeating Thanos, getting all the stones back, using them.

They came up with simple plans, with complicated ones, brainstormed, discarded, started again.

Occasionally, they had to take some time out from working on their attack plans to deal with some dipshit villain who decided it would be a good time to try to take over the world while everything was in chaos. When they had to deal with those B-list villains, they fell into familiar team strategies, fighting like they were a single entity existing in different bodies. Steve and Tony led the group, working in tandem like they had never spent a day apart.

Tony would always check Steve over after battles like that, barely standing still as Steve did the same to him. At first, it was because they had already lost so much that neither could bear the thought of losing someone else. But eventually, it became something else.

It wasn’t just Strange’s prophesy. It wasn’t just because they _had to_.

Without all the bullshit between them, without the resentment and preconceived notions, without the external interferences and internal reticence, the exhilarating rapport that always existed between them quickly blossomed further. Their combined potential was finally given breathing room to grow.

They spent many late nights in each other’s company, and they both moved into the Avengers compound, finally together in the same place at the same time.

Steve always had Tony’s coffee ready for him when Tony stumbled out of his bedroom in the mornings, zombie-like. Tony always had Steve’s newsfeeds projected on one wall when Steve came down to his workshop after a morning coordinating rebuilding efforts.

They still argued sometimes, but it was mainly to challenge each other, to drive each other to greater heights. Steve argued with Tony over attack strategies, Tony argued with Steve over timing and who to bring along. They pushed, pulled, compromised.

At some point, they had become indispensable to each other.

Life was hard now, a constant ache every time he looked up expecting to see someone who wasn’t there, every time he woke up screaming from nightmares of disintegrating people and a sad, quavering voice saying he didn’t want to go.

It was painful and difficult.

But it would be so much worse if he didn’t have Steve by his side.

Some days, Tony thought that Steve might feel the same way. Whenever Steve touched his hand to get his attention, when Steve smiled at him with heartbreaking, fragile hope, with the way the hard lines of stress on his face softened when he looked at Tony.

Tony didn’t know if he was imagining things, or just seeing what he wanted to see, if he was just influenced by what Strange had said.   

It all came to a head one day, when a building fell on top of Tony.

The morning had started with Tony in a bad mood because he had to skip his morning coffee prepared by Steve due to a red alert from Damage Control about a building that was on the verge of a collapse. The building had been badly damaged weeks ago after a helicopter rammed into it as a result of the helicopter’s pilot disintegrating into dust mid-flight.

Unfortunately, things had just worsened substantially when one of the cracked load-bearing support pillars within the building had started to crumble, causing the situation to go from dangerous to urgent in one afternoon. It was reaching the point where they had to do something to the structural integrity of the building or risk an uncontrolled collapse at any moment.

This kind of clean up and fixing wasn’t unusual. It was hardly the first structure that needed attention. Tony’s help was only asked for under dire emergencies, so he made himself available to the Stark Industries’ engineers on site. He joined them in evaluating the best way to stabilize the building.

They had just decided on Tony using his Iron Man suit to help with some patchwork construction when one of Tony’s people came running up.

“The building has been empty since the helicopter crash, but someone just told me that they think a homeless guy has been living in the building since its previous occupants moved out,” the surveyor said.

Tony swore under his breath. What had started as a simple job to shore up structural integrity had morphed into a potential rescue mission.

“I’m going in,” Tony said, ignoring all the immediate protests, acknowledging and dismissing the warnings about how the building could collapse at any moment. He had no choice; he couldn’t leave someone else to die inside.

He tapped his arc reactor and glittering nanites poured outwards from their casing, quickly enveloping him in the form of his sleek Mark 50 Iron Man suit. Once the faceplate snapped shut over his face, he lifted off the ground with a blast of his repulsors and flew straight into the gaping hole in the side of the building, the opening made courtesy of the crashing helicopter.

He went level by level, checking all the residential apartments and the offices, before he found the guy sleeping in the basement. Of course.

By then, the building had been creaking and groaning alarmingly, walls trembling every so often. His manpower outside had been making increasingly frantic noises asking him to come out.

Tony landed by the guy’s side and said, “Hey, it’s not safe in here.”

Which was when the building collapsed on top of them.

Tony dove for the man. He knew it was too late, he wouldn’t be able to get them out of the basement and out a door or window on time. Instead, he covered the man with his body and sent the nanites sliding off his body to take shape over his back.

It took all of Tony’s nanites, forming a dome around him and the screaming man, to save their lives. It was a tight fit under the dome, and even after the man stopped shouting, it felt claustrophobic. Tony spoke to the sobbing man, trying to keep him calm, trying to keep _himself_ calm.

He felt short on breath, but he told himself that he couldn’t go down like this. Not like this. There was still work to be done. He couldn’t let everyone down like this.

It took three hours of slow, careful work from the rescuers before Tony saw sunlight again. His clothing was soaked through with cold sweat and he was feeling a distinct shortness of breath.

“Tony?” There was knocking against his dome.

Tony let the nanite dome draw back into his arc reactor as he fell over to the side, gasping for breath. He felt strong arms pull him out through the rubble, watched hazily as the homeless man was helped out as well. Tony turned, drawing in deep breaths of fresh air into his struggling lungs.

Steve was holding him up by the arms. Steve was the one who had pulled him out, after digging through the rubble, his hair powdered gray from the dust, fingers bleeding and torn up from moving broken pieces of cement and jagged metal bars with his bare hands.

“Steve,” Tony coughed, trying to get in more clean air.

“Tony, oh, Tony, god, I thought you— I thought—” Steve gripped his arms.

Then Steve kissed him.

It was messy, with Steve missing his lips at first, pressing a kiss to Tony’s goatee, before he angled his head and tried again, a desperate kiss powered by terror. Tony clutched clumsily at Steve’s shoulders and kissed him back as best as he could. There was powder on their skin, and dust on their tongues, but he wasn’t going to miss this opportunity, finally giving in to what he really wanted to do all this time. 

Later, much later, in the privacy of Tony’s bedroom, Tony whispered, “If you didn’t mean to, if it was just, uh, some adrenaline thing—”

“Shut up,” Steve said fiercely, and kissed Tony again before gasping out, “I don’t want to wait anymore. We’re going to fix things, but we don’t know… We don’t know what could happen.”

Tony nodded, pressed his hands tenderly against the sides of Steve’s bearded face, relishing the way Steve closed his eyes in pleasure at the contact. Then Tony pulled him down for another kiss.

# # # # # #

“I love you.”

Every day, they said that to each other.

Every day, they got closer to their goal.

“I love you.”

Just in case.

# # # # # #

They had the gauntlet. They had gone to space, tracked down Thanos’ army’s preferred haunting grounds from the time before Thanos achieved his ultimate goal. They had used B.A.R.F., examined Tony’s memories to figure out the location of where Loki’s army had come from during the first alien invasion. Based on the position of the stars after Tony had gone through the wormhole with a nuclear missile on his back, they were able to make a good guess. Nebula had provided the location for Thanos’ throne, because it seemed even Thanos, with all his lofty ideals, was occasionally as clichéd as a big megalomaniac alien could be.

They had triangulated his position, figured out where Thanos was most likely to be from all the places he had appeared in or amassed his army. He seemed to mostly keep to a quadrant close to Titan, never straying far from where he used to live.

They found him on a small barren wasteland of a planet. No one lived on it, not anymore. It was a small planet that Titan had once colonized, which had eventually fallen into ruin when Titan stopped sending the colony supplies.

They had taken the fight to Thanos. Thor, Steve, Tony, Natasha, Bruce, Clint, and Rhodey. A fighting team again, with Okoye, Nebula and a talking raccoon added to the mix.

They couldn’t lose this time.

# # # # # #

It had been a brutal, drawn out fight.

This time, Thor aimed for Thanos’ head.

Nebula spat on his body in the aftermath.

“Now what?” she had said, because she had known that they had a greater purpose beyond Thanos’ death. She had been running on vengeance, but now, she looked at Tony with dangerous hope in her eyes.

She wanted Gamora back.

They all had people they wanted back.

“Now we use the stones.”

They found the Stones, still embedded in the blackened and broken gauntlet, useless to Thanos without a tool to wield them. Tony formed a thick layer of nanites around his fingers, not daring to risk skin contact with the Stones as he started to handle them. He transferred each of the Infinity Stones onto the new gauntlet they had made. He did it slowly, carefully, Stone by Stone, as the others watched with hope and fear. 

Tony ran through their goal on his mind. They would let Thor wield the gauntlet. As an Asgardian, as someone who could handle massive surges’ of power, he was most likely to be able to use it, direct it and survive it.

Except…

The last Stone wouldn’t come off. It was dull orange, flat. Unlike the other Stones that glowed, this one seemed lifeless. Tony had noticed from the start, but he was hoping, hoping that he was just mistaken.

He wasn’t mistaken.

He formed his nanites into sharp points and tried to pry the Stone out of the gauntlet, tried to tear it out.

Clint turned his face away, his body radiating hopelessness. Out of everyone, he was the one who had come with the least hope, only wanting revenge and not daring to consider there was a way to reverse things after he saw his wife and children disintegrate before his eyes. He couldn’t hope and lose again.

None of them could lose, not so close, not when they were almost there.

Tony tried again and again to pry the Stone off.

Thor closed his eyes, as if he could no longer watch this futile effort.

_If this didn’t work, if they couldn’t do this…_

Tony looked up, seeking only one face. Steve looked at him, his face drawn again. But his blue eyes were filled with love when he looked at Tony, a silent communication to him.

This had been their remaining hope.

But if they failed here, it wasn’t the end. Tony would still have Steve, and Steve would still have Tony.

Tony remembered Peter’s frightened voice, saying he didn’t want to go.

Tony would still have Steve, but he would have failed Peter. Pepper and Happy.

He couldn’t, they couldn’t…

Nebula said, cutting through his thoughts, “It’s the Soul Stone. It must need a sacrifice. That must be the only reason why Thanos would kill his favourite daughter. It was his sacrifice to the Stone.”

Her voice was flat, metallic, but somehow, filled with bitter rage.

“After everything he did to us, he still had one more use for her left,” Nebula said, turning her head in disgust.

“So the Soul Stone needs a sacrifice? A sacrifice of one’s child?” Thor asked.

“I don’t know the details,” Nebula said. “It’s a guess.”

“Who knows the details?” Natasha asked. “Maybe we need to go to the place they found the stone.”

Tony stared at the Stone, feeling a creeping horror even as he kept prying at it.

_‘The Soul Stone requires a sacrifice… You must lose the one you love.’_

It was like the words were whispered into his mind. No, not just into his mind. Whispered up from the stone into his nanites, to his skin, to his fingers, to his entire being.

To his soul.

And now, Tony understood.

He had wondered, he had wondered at every step, what Steve and Tony had to do together that was so crucial, why Strange had given him that message.

That moment on that hot dry planet, on Titan, where everything was red and dead, when Strange had pulled him aside and told him, “There’s only one future out of 14 million where everything is put right again. Every other future ultimately fails. Even when we get the gauntlet or the Stones away from him, Thanos will eventually gain power again, find the Stones and use them. There is no other future which will reverse the destruction and death that Thanos has inflicted. So listen to me. You and Steve, you need to do this together. Not just as angry team members working together. You need to genuinely be together.”

Tony had been confused. “What the hell do you mean?”

“There’s no time, and I can’t tell you everything. That changes the future too. But know this; you and Steve need to do this together. Whatever problems you had with him, resolve it. There needs to be _love_. Do you understand me? You need to love each other. The seed is there, you need to nurture it.”

Tony had gaped at him. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“It’s the only way,” Strange had repeated, staring at him with urgency, with sadness as well.

Tony hadn’t understood. Not at first. He didn’t think it was possible. How could Steve love him? How could he love Steve, with the anger between them?

But it had happened. Feelings had eventually grown between them the longer they spent their time together. It had seemed so natural, like it was always meant to be. Tony had wondered if that was what Strange had seen, the all-encompassing warmth and love between them.

Tony had thought Strange had seen their love tying the team together, ensuring they worked together better, about never letting bad blood affect them again.

He was wrong.

He was so wrong.

Tony felt a tear trickle down his cheek.

It was okay…

It was going to be okay… They had all gone into this knowing that they might not come out of it alive. Each one of them knew what was at stake, what the end goal was, what they might have to sacrifice to get there.

Each one of them was ready to die for the world.

Tony got up, leaving the blackened gauntlet on the ground. He reached out, almost blindly with the tears in his eyes obscuring his vision, and Steve immediately caught his hand, drew nearer.

“It’s—It’s okay, Tony,” Steve said. “Maybe we can find someone who understands the Stones better, to find out what we need to do to use it. Even, even if we don’t, we tried…”

He whispered those last words into Tony’s lips, as Tony pressed closer for a kiss. Tony tilted his head, deepened the kiss, tasted Steve…

…for the last time.

“I know. It’s okay,” Tony said against Steve’s lips, tasting the salt from his tears. “It’ll be okay. It was always meant to go like this. I love you.”

Steve pulled back a little, looked at Tony with a deep frown. “I love you too, Tony. You know I do. We can still find a way, don’t give up yet.”

“I’m not giving up. I know the way,” Tony said, softly.

Natasha cried out in warning, so she must have seen Tony extending the blade formed out of nanites from the Iron Man gauntlet. Thor turned, Rhodey tried to reach them...

But it was too late.

Tony raised his hand and stabbed the blade in.

Steve looked down, slowly, shock written across his face.

Tony had been holding Steve’s hand, holding him close, so Steve never suspected what was going on.

The nanites from Tony’s gauntlet had secured Steve’s hand to Tony’s, wrapped Steve’s hand into a grip around Tony’s own, right before forcing the long blade protruding from the gauntlet into Tony’s chest, stabbing in right beside his arc reactor.

It had happened so quickly that it was clear Steve hadn’t understood what had happened until he felt the motion, felt the resistance, felt the knife go in.

It was a fatal blow. Tony knew it. He could feel the blood pouring out of his wound from a severed artery, felt his body weakening by the second.

Steve’s beautiful blue eyes came back up again, tears filling them. Anguish was written across his face, and that was Tony’s one regret in all of this. He had hurt Steve through this, he had sacrificed his own life and hurt Steve, the one thing he had never wanted to do.

But he had to do this, to save the world.

They had been happy, for a while. At least they had that.

“Why? Tony, why?” Steve choked out, catching Tony around the waist as his legs gave way. “ _Why_?”

Tony coughed up blood, feeling it trickle out of his mouth, and whispered, “The Stone said it needed a sacrifice. A sacrifice of something that the wielder loves the most.”

Tears spilled out of Steve’s eyes. “No, Tony, _no._ I can’t do this without you. We need to do this together, remember? Together... Tony, please don’t leave me…”

“We’re together,” Tony said, breathless now. “You made me so happy, Steve. I didn’t know, I didn’t know it was possible… after everything…”

His vision was fading, his thoughts slipping by. All he could see now was Steve, Steve’s tears, Steve’s blue eyes… At least he could look at Steve’s face as he went. At least he had that.

Tony murmured, as darkness crowded his vision, “Thank you for loving me… Now go save the universe.”

And then…

Tony died.

# # # # # #

Steve held Tony’s body, slumping to the ground with him, keening over Tony’s lifeless body.

No one said a word.

No one came near him.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he stopped shaking, stopped rocking Tony’s body, wishing for all this to be undone, wishing for Tony to come back.

Finally, finally, Steve pulled back. The nanites holding his hand to Tony’s fell away, scattering in the wind.

In his hand, which had been clenched tight as he wept over Tony, was a sharp-edged, rough object, like unpolished rock. He unclenched his trembling fingers, revealing the glowing Soul Stone sitting on his palm like it had always been there.

Tony’s sacrifice.

Numbly, Steve pressed the Stone to the remaining space on the new gauntlet. Impossible power surged from within the gauntlet, filling the air with an electric hum. Now, it was complete.

But Steve knew, he knew just from the brief contact with the Soul Stone that Thor couldn’t wield the gauntlet.Thor couldn’t use the Soul Stone, so he couldn’t use all the Infinity Stones together. Thor had lost a lot, sacrificed much, but he hadn’t sacrificed _for_ the Soul Stone.

It had to be Steve.

From the look on everyone’s faces around him, they all knew it.

It was a bitter, painful realization, what they had lost just to use the gauntlet. Steve had wanted to bring everyone back, wanted desperately… but never at the cost of Tony’s life. Never that.

But he didn’t have a choice in that anymore.

Rhodey stepped forward, eyes wide and pained with tears streaming down his face.

“Don’t waste his sacrifice,” he said hoarsely.

Steve only nodded. And pulled on the Infinity gauntlet.

# # # # # #

The world laid before his feet. Everything, _everything_ made sense. He could see how the fabric of the universe was woven together, could see how the threads bound together, turning chaos into order, into a tapestry of life.

He knew how it worked.

He knew how to make it work.

He could have anything.

He could have _Tony_ back.

He knew he could, the power was in his hands…

But he was only human. He only had one chance, he couldn’t just keep wishing and wishing with this gauntlet because he wouldn’t be able to withstand it, he knew. He had only one chance.

One wish.

Don’t waste his sacrifice. Steve knew he couldn’t let Tony down like this.

Steve wished… he wished… even with despair in his heart, Steve wished…

_Undo what Thanos did. Undo it all._

Bright light enveloped his world, beginning from the gauntlet, and shattering across his vision until all he could see was white, white, white.

And Steve was gone.

# # # # # #

On earth, T’Challa opened his eyes, looked up. He was on grass, he had just been holding Okoye’s hand, but now… where was he? He had to find her. The field around him was full of Wakandans sitting up around him, confusion on their faces.

Bucky pushed himself upright. Wasn’t Steve just standing there? He felt disoriented. Was the grass so high a moment ago? Where did everyone go? The talking tree stumbled out from the bushes, looking as confused as a tree could look.

Pepper gasped as she sat up straight. She was in her office, and it felt like something strange had just happened. Her secretary who had been tidying up the shelves turned and screamed when she saw Pepper.

On Titan, Peter opened his eyes. He remembered… he remembered Mister Stark, holding him, looking down at him with wide, horrified eyes. He remembered, he had been begging Mister Stark to help him, to stop him from going.

Peter lifted his hands and stared at them in wonder.

He hadn’t gone. He was back. Mister Stark had done it!

Peter sat up with a whoop. “Mister Stark! You did it! Mister Stark? Where are you?”

Stephen Strange came back to the sound of Peter’s confused and increasingly distressed calls, but kept his eyes closed against the reality of what happened, against what he had gambled.

Against what he had set in motion.

Nurturing the seed of love so it could blossom into a flower to be sacrificed.

All around the universe, confused people blinked, opened their eyes, alive again, whole again. Their loved ones screamed in shock, cried with joy, took them into their arms.

And balance was restored once more.

At a price paid by two men.

It had been the only way.

Stephen Strange wept with his eyes closed, unseen by anyone.

# # # # # #

Epilogue

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Steve opened his eyes and saw the familiar figure further up the winding path, recognizable even from behind. He could recognize that man anywhere. Love and joy filled his chest. He called out, happy, running to him.

Tony turned around and smiled.

# # # # # #

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote all this in one sitting, in a big rush after watching IW. I just had this idea that had to be written down. Then I spent ages being unsatisfied with it until finally, Franz laid hands on it, and lo and behold, I feel better about it and can post it now. I still think there’s room for improvement, but I have to focus on RBB instead, oops… I did add more scenes and tweak it after Franz was done, because I can’t leave my own fics well alone until they’re posted, so all mistakes are my own! 
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you think! Sorry for the pain, but I needed to share my angsty ideas and feelings!
> 
> Edit to add: So I just found out that there’s a [Soul Stone comic](http://shaliara.tumblr.com/post/173842939649/what-if-they-had-the-gauntlet-back-and-gather-the) with a similar premise that was posted today as well. (It's beautifully heartbreaking, so check it out!) I wrote this fic before I saw the comic, so that’s why the story doesn’t match up, in case anyone is wondering if this story is inspired by that comic, haha. Today must be angsty brain-twin day.


End file.
